Spirited change rewarded with titles

DOMAINE Asmara winery’s expansion into spirit production, under the In Good Spirits label, has been rewarded with two gold medals plus a silver at the Melbourne International Spirits Competition 2023.

Owner, winemaker and distiller Andreas Greiving said the Mediterranean and Heathcote Shiraz gins both took out top spot in their group, while the Arabica Vodka came in second.

“This is our first competition,” he said. “We came top in two categories and each category had 150 entries.

“These were all our first batches too.”

Mr Greiving and his wife Henni purchased their Toolleen vineyard in 2009 after he was made redundant during the global financial crisis.

“Wine is my passion though,” he said. “We’ve won big awards for our wines, we were a top 10 Halliday winery in our first vintage, we were five star for many years, and we won many gold medals.”

However crippling Chinese tariffs on Australian wine imports meant that their biggest market dried up in early 2021.

“We were exporting 80 per cent or more of our wine to China,” Mr Greiving said.

“Replacing China with other export markets is very difficult, it doesn’t happen overnight, and other countries are not waiting for Australian wines to come and take over.

“Then you are left with some options, one is just to sell as much fruit as you can, but obviously it’s not really viable commercially, or you can come up with a different idea.

“Our idea was to put in the distillery and convert most of the grapes that we were making into wine into that spirit.

“Most distilleries buy the base spirit, which is essentially industrial produced, and convert it to vodka or gin.”

But Mr Greiving seized the opportunity to make it from scratch using grapes from his vineyard.

“You might think it’s a crazy thing to do,” he said. “Using these precious grapes, these super, premium Heathcote wine grapes, but they can also produce a very good spirit.

“It also means the spirit we produce has a sense of place. It comes from here.”

A commitment to using fresh, rather than dried, herbs and botanicals to flavour the gin has also helped to create a point of difference.

“The Mediterranean gin is an explosion of citrus favours,” Mr Greiving said. “It hits you first upfront and it also lingers.

“I use fresh oranges and fresh lemons instead of buying dried peel and that really comes through.

“We put fresh basil in there, fresh mint, fresh fennel and it all goes into the gin basket in the still.

“You can smell the freshness and intensity.”

The gin and vodka produced by In Good Spirits, along with whiskey and brandy that are currently in the pipeline but not yet available, are all made in a small 50 litre still.

“Then I hand bottle it, hand wax it and we label it,” Mr Greiving said. “Henni numbers them, every single bottle, so it’s all handcrafted in a true sense.”

Domaine Asmara has scaled back its wine production to less than half, although Mr Greiving expects the Chinese market to reopen at some point.

“A year ago we were just offering wine and now within a few months our spirits probably out sell our wine,” he said. “Spirits are popular.”

Plans are also underway to upgrade the cellar door.

“The whole frontage, including the roller door, will have a large mural within the next six months or so,” he said. “The artist is Jimmy Dvate who did most of the silo artwork in Rochester.”

“There’ll be new seating arrangements and a new water feature.

“We also want to offer master classes, but our tastings will still be free.”